Hard Rain Falling (23 page)

“Well, an sometimes they’d lose their tempers, too, and take me out an beat me up an take the money back, and mine too, but that’s a lot tougher than it looks when my money is on the line. I left a few surprised cats around, man.

“Don’t ask me what happened next, man. It was too funny. I was goin with this chick from the college, and one night I get real scared and can’t sleep and can’t think an lay there in my bed feelin the horrors come down and sit on my chest an I’m thinkin about all that shit, you know, there aint no God and the world is the worse fuckin place there is an we’re all out to eat each other up and everything goes, an I’m just a speck in a universe full of specks an one of these days there’s gonna be one less speck an nobody will know; all that cryin shit, you know, an somehow it got stuck in my head that love was the answer, an I was goin with this girl, so I must of loved her, so I gets up out of bed and jumps over to her place, she was livin at home, an bangs on her window, an in about twelve seconds I was married, workin at the bowlin alley and had two kids.
Wham!
My old lady wanted to be a social worker, dig, and I was gonna work in the bowlin alley—I didn’t give a shit for college—while she finished up her schoolin, groovy, I had the money, but then she got pregnant and all I hear from her is bringin new life into the world an all that crap until the baby comes, an she’s gonna go back to school anyway, an here comes the second kid, an that was that. Man, my whole life changed. For a while I dug it, naturally, I had me a good job at the alley, and they put in a bunch of pool tables an I had that all goin for me, I was a pretty big man there for my age; but every once in a while the whole bit got old and I’d hit the road again, leave the shoeshine stand in the hands of my
assistant;
you know, and head for San Francisco, LA, or Chicago. Sometimes I won, sometimes I lost, but I always kept the caseroll tight, and when I’d get lonely, I’d come home. Man, how
dull
it got.”

It was at about this time, three weeks after Jack started working in the kitchen, that Claymore disappeared from San Quentin. Everyone was delighted, and began making book on his capture. With not too much else to do that had the spice of life to it, gambling was very important to some of the convicts, and they would bet on almost anything. Of course the biggest bets were on the men in death row, and of them, the most action was on Caryl Chessman, who had been there over four years already and whose arrogant, intelligent face inspired nearly everybody. To them, to some of them, he was one little man, using his larceny and his brains against the entire machinery of the State. If he finally won, there was an unconscious yearning in many of them that the State, the machinery,
all
, would just fizzle away and the gates open and they could go home. The odds on Chessman at this time were there to four against. Jack saw him once, crossing the big yard under escort; he was surprised at how small Chessman was.

The odds on Claymore were a little more sentimental; after all, he was an expert in a sense, and so the betting was a flat even-money proposition.

The night they heard about it Billy was excited and nervous in the cell. “Man,” he said to Jack, “me and that Claymore are
connected
. I can feel it.”

“What do you mean? Because he’s a Negro?”

Billy rubbed his mouth. He did not look either happy or unhappy, but disturbed. “I don’t know. When he first come in here and headed up that pipe I could feel it, you know. Connected. That’s all.”

From Billy’s mood, Jack decided not to ask any more questions, and spent the time until lights-out reading in his history book. Afterward, in the semidarkness, he heard Billy say from above, “That man’s
got
to stay free.”

Now, this was something Jack could not understand. He knew, of course, that
free
meant outside the prison, and that he himself wanted that, especially when he awakened in the mornings to the cell, or stood by the door while the guard at the end of the long walkway pulled down the heavy bar that locked the cells; at such moments there was a heavy tension in him to just run, run down the gallery past a thousand cells or throw himself off the side and into the court; a pain starting at the edges of his eyes as he sat still for the count or put on his shoes—that he could understand, but not Billy’s passionate need for Claymore to stay free. Personal freedom, yes, of course; but why freedom for somebody else? It did not make sense.

“If you want to escape,” he said to Billy, “why don’t you try?”

Billy laughed. He did not even bother to answer. When they heard Claymore was caught and on Alcatraz, Billy brooded for days.

Eventually, with so much time ahead of him, Jack got used to San Quentin. The yellow walls, the tall barred windows, the girders in the dining hall, became as familiar as home to him; even the smokestacks, through one of which the cyanide gas and a man’s life had too often risen, wrinkling the sky for a few minutes above the north block at around ten in the morning. He even learned how to play dominoes, out at the picnic tables in the big yard. He had to—the enemy here was even more intangible than in reform school or the orphanage, and his fear that he would become accustomed to the life and even learn to
like
it was outweighed by the need to survive each day. For this it was necessary for him to become a
con
, to join the club; at least on the surface. He learned the language and he learned the ropes: that a man who never got into trouble with the
screws
was almost as bad as somebody who was always in trouble; that when you were asked to pass contraband you did it, not as a minor piece of defiance but because without some kind of connecting force of law among the inmates the prison would become an anarchy and the prisoners less than men. It was necessary for their self-esteem that they consider, no matter how comically, that they were in charge of their own destiny, and to break the rules a little demonstrated this. It also got stuff passed, which was probably even more important. The perfect convict, the man who lived entirely by the rules set down for him, was not a man but a vegetable. And the constant troublemaker, no matter how sick he was inside, was actually doing just what the State expected of him, therefore justifying the existence of the prison. So it was a matter of delicate balance between defiance and obedience.

But naturally, he learned, there was no unanimity. Not all the prisoners gambled, not all of them did any particular thing; they didn’t even all agree that prison was wrong—many not only thought it was right but admitted that they belonged in there. On this matter, Jack was not certain himself. Deep inside there was a tickle of guilt, an admission, perhaps, of the justice of prison existence. With Billy Lancing it was just the opposite. Penology was something Billy could get passionate about.

“Prison stinks, man. It really stinks. Think of all them mother-fuckers on the outside who don’t know what it’s like and think we belong here. Man, think about them cats. Aint a one of them don’t break the law every time it gets in their way; man, I read a book once that said most of the money lost in crime in this country was stuff like stolen paper clips, shit like that, bank presidents runnin off to Mexico; and think a minute about the guys in jail because they ran
gambling games!
Can you believe it? Gambling? Every fuckin lawyer and judge in the fuckin country plays poker at his fatass
club
, an then goes down to court and gives some poor asshole two years for playin the same goddam game! What the fuck is this shit? And
cheat
you? What fuckin businessman wouldn’t cheat you if he got the chance?
Shit!
”

Jack laughed at him. “You’re sure pissed off. Somebody cheat you?”

Billy looked at him incredulously. “Cheat me? What the fuck do you think my fuckin sentence is? Fair play? I bop one check in my entire fuckin life and get one-to-five! What the fuck would you call that? And here some chickenshit accountant draws thirty thousand dollars out of the till an they give him
six months!
Look around you, man, all you’ll see in here is the fuggin chicken thieves; all the big boys, the pros, the white-collar cats, are on the outside, or down in Chino out in the sun. Sure, fuck yes, you got to do somethin with the criminals, but you got to do it to
all
the criminals, or the whole thing is
horse
-shit.”

Jack said, “Well, what did you expect?”

Billy snorted. “Now I’m locked up, I don’t expect nothin. But they better not let me out of here.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“No. Fuck no. Let me out and I’ll kiss every ass from here to the Supreme Court to keep from comin back.”

“Okay,” Jack said. “So there’s a lot of injustice. So what? What’s that got to do with you?”

“Nothin. Only, I do hate it. Man, justice is based on the idea that we all got a right to live our lives any way we fuckin please, so long as we don’t fuck up anybody else. Okay, I did wrong. I’ll pay, I’ll do my time. But I hope you don’t think I’m doin this time cause I bopped that one little check. I hope you know I’d be home free or at worst out on
probation
if I had the money to buy a good lawyer.” He had his hands in his pockets and his skinny shoulders hunched up, grinning down at Jack on the bunk. “I hope you dig that lawyer scene. Did you have a lawyer?”

Jack explained to him, for the first time, what had happened in Balboa County. Billy listened, smiling, nodding his head as if the story confirmed his thesis.

“Yeah. They sucked you in royally, tellin you that if you
cooperate
, everthin gets better an better. Man, don’t you know the
machine
don’t need your help? The only thing you can do to the
machine
is fuck it up. You can’t help it. But you can slow it down. Now, like my case, man. I forged a check, dig? I won’t give you the whole scam, but like it was a payroll check, some cats got this check protector and print up a bunch, and hand em out to cats like me to cash, for a quarter of the money. So I’m broke an I cash the fucker, an three days later a couple dicks come in to the Palace an haul my ass to jail. On an
information
; like, somebody turned me up, dig?

“So me an this dumb kid lawyer goes to court, see, and this bartender gets up an says he seen me endorse the check an he recognizes it, an then some cop gets up there an says they got about fifty checks just like it an endorsed the same way, an my lawyer just sits there. The gas is, I didn’t endorse any of the checks at all! So they got me for a whole goddam crime wave!”

“Well, you got screwed, that’s all,” Jack said.

“Yeah, but my point is, a good lawyer could of got me off. I studied up on this, man. Like, the bartender says he
saw
me, an he says he saw me
write
. Well, man, a good lawyer’s gonna hire a expert to come and
prove
that endorsement aint in my writing, dig, so that makes everything the fuggin bartender says bullshit. An he was their only witness, cause the cat that turned me up sure hell aint gonna show up in court. Hell, whoever it was only turned me up to take the heat off himself.”

Jack thought about that for a while. “Well, why don’t you make an appeal, or something? Like Chessman?”

Billy sneered at him. “Are you out of your skull? Who’s gonna pay for the fuggin
transcript?
The Urban League? Fuck it. I’ll do my time. But what grinds my ass is all the goddam people takin away my rights, stealin my money, makin it tough on my kids, an gettin away with it. I’m talkin about
crime
, not law. They don’t even
have
laws for some of the shit they pull.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talkin about,” Jack said.

“You wouldn’t. You’re white.”

“Oh. That. Well, I’m here, too. You ain’t in here because you’re part Negro; you’re in here because you forged a check.”

“Sho, man, I aint talkin about that. You’re in here because you’re too fuckin dumb to keep out. So am I. But I was talkin
in general
, not you and me.”

“Why bother?”

“I give up. You are the dumbest cat I ever met.”

“I just don’t see it,” Jack said. “They put us in here because it was easier than leaving us outside on the street. They had the power and they used it. I’m no victim of injustice. I’m not a victim of anything.”

“Sho,” Billy laughed. “You’re in here cause you love me.”

Lately it had been coming up like that, accidentally, in joke, or a casual touch, or a reference to somebody else; but it was getting to the point where their evening dialogues were tinged with it and making them both nervous. Once, when they were half-undressed for the night, Billy was trying to get past Jack to go to the toilet and he brushed against him in such a way that Jack could feel Billy’s fingers against his thigh. There was a quick shove, an exchange of profanity, and both went to bed infuriated, their friendship dissolved. Jack lay there angry and offended, tense beyond reason, and Billy lay above him mortified and angry, equally tense.

“I wouldn’t touch you with a ten-foot
pole!
” Billy hissed down angrily through the darkness. After a few moments of electric silence, Jack heard him chuckle and add, “Even if I
had
a ten-foot pole.” But it was several days before Jack built up his nerve enough to apologize.

Sex in prison is a matter of three choices: abstinence, masturbation, and homosexuality. Jack was familiar with all three, in varying degrees. At the orphanage the boys had been watched very carefully to see that they did not indulge in any “obscene practices,” but naturally the boys managed, as they always do, furtively, quickly, and in darkness. The few homosexual episodes Jack remembered from the orphanage were all of the brutal sort, in which a small or weak and generally unpopular boy was forced by a ring of grim youths to submit himself to rape. The emotional climate of the orphanage did not seem to encourage crushes or pairings of any sort; only gang activity. Any boy caught masturbating, Jack remembered, was subjected to incessant and cruel joking from the other boys, and public humiliation from the administration. But it was clearly understood among the boys that all this was merely “something to do” and that Sex meant Women. In a way, Women meant growing-up-and-getting-out-of-here, and one of the first things Jack did after running away was to visit a whorehouse. Although he had taken part, often as a leader, in the rapes and circle-jerks, he dropped all that sort of thing on the outside, and like most boys of high-school age, resorted to masturbation only when he had to, and even then felt angry and shabby about it afterward.